


Come On Up To The House

by sinuous_curve



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Community: avengerkink, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-09
Updated: 2012-05-09
Packaged: 2017-11-05 01:34:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/400998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinuous_curve/pseuds/sinuous_curve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Their door looks like every other door on their floor; silver numbers that’ve needed a good polish for the better part of a decade and and matching handle and lock. When Phil slides his key in, the zero in the middle of 407 retracts and a retinal scan pushes out. He lines his right eye up to the green light and ten seconds later hears the cheerful boop that means he’s him and welcome to come inside. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come On Up To The House

It’s almost two by the time Phil makes it to their apartment, long commutes being one of the perils of a normal office day happening on the helipad flying thirty thousand feet over the Atlantic. 

He scrubs the heel of his hand over his eyes climbing the stairs to their fourth floor walkup, trying to remember why the building’s lack of elevator hadn’t been an automatic disqualification when they were looking. Granted, he and Nick were fifteen years younger when they first rented the place and creaking knees still seemed like the province of old men, not agents in their prime being recruited to found the most secret, most advanced intelligence agency on the planet. 

Phil has it on good authority that fifteen years ago he was still young enough to be an idiot. 

Their door looks like every other door on their floor; silver numbers that’ve needed a good polish for the better part of a decade and and matching handle and lock. When Phil slides his key in, the zero in the middle of 407 retracts and a retinal scan pushes out. He lines his right eye up to the green light and ten seconds later hears the cheerful boop that means he’s him and welcome to come inside. 

(If he wasn’t welcome to come inside, the door would lock down until override protocols were entered by him or Nick. If he wasn’t welcome and tried to force his way in, the door handle was a perfectly serviceable tazer alternative.) 

“You’re late, Agent Coulson,” Nick says when he comes inside.

Phil closes the door and turns the lock, grins crookedly and toes off his shoes. “Sorry, boss, you know how it goes with paperwork.” 

Nick snorts and sets his book face down on the coffee table. At home, when he’s not Director Fury, the leather coat gets hung up in the closet and the black clothes tossed in the hamper. He’s got on gray sweats that have been washed so many times the cuffs are in tatters and a Howard tee shirt from the late eighties with holes under the arms. The part of Phil that lives or dies on organization and function dies a little at that, but it’s not like they have the time to shop, even if they did have the inclination. 

“You up for a later dinner?” Nick asks. 

“Sure,” Phil nods. “You order, I’m going to shower.” 

The villain of the day was an escaped Hydra lab monster, which in and of itself was honestly barely a two on the scale of Strange Things The Avengers Deal with. However, for some reason the Hydra scientists had sawn fit to equip said lab monster with excessive amounts of mucus producing membranes and Phil’s almost positive he’s got alien goo in a wide and unfortunate variety of unmentionable places. 

He strips down his boxers in their bedroom, dumping his clothes in the hamper designated for the lost cause clothing that no amount of trips to the laundromat will be able to save. There’s a basket of clean laundry on top of their bureau and he grabs a tee shirt and sweats on his way to the bathroom. 

Because fifteen years ago it had seemed important and necessary to live in the city instead of burroughs or, god forbid New Jersey, their apartment is on the very generous side of the small. The bathroom’s still barely big enough for the sink, toilet, and shower stall. Phil cranks the spray up as high as it will go and braces himself against the sink to wait for the water to warm up. 

He looks at his reflection in the mirror and smiles wryly. The first night he and Nick moved into the apartment, Nick bent him over the sink and fucked him with the bathroom door open and no curtains on the bedroom window. It’d felt like the most dangerous thing he’d ever done with the cold porcelain against his hips and Nick’s hand on his shoulder. Of course, now New York says they could get married. It’s funny how things change. 

Phil showers fast, scrubbing himself down with a bar of soap and a washcloth until his skin feels prickly and tight from the shower’s heat. He leans forward against the slick tile and lets the spray pound against his back for a little bit longer, where the muscles are tight. His doctor, a SHIELD doctor no less, says he needs to be conscious of stress. Phil very nearly laughed until he cried at that. 

Dried and dressed, he walks barefoot back into the living room and drops down on the couch beside Nick, who’s got his book back open in one hand. Phil fits against Nick’s side, Nick’s arm around his shoulders, and gets an absent kiss on his temple. “Chinese will be here in fifteen.” 

There’s a joke in there about them probably needing to get back to work if the Chinese are invading that Tony would be able to make, but neither of them are Tony -- thank God -- and that kind of international incident is slowly phasing out of their focus as the universe keeps getting bigger. “Sesame beef?” Phil asks. 

“Obviously.”

Nick marks his place one handed and sets his book aside; he shifts, putting his feet up on the coffee table and pulling Phil closer. 

Neither of them spend all that much time in their apartment any given week, or month, or year. And more than once they’ve talked about giving the place up altogether as an unnecessary expense (which is a lesser concern) and a security risk (which is a much greater concern.) Practically, Phil can see the reasons why it doesn’t make much sense to hold onto their place, except. It’s _their_ place and he just can’t imagine moments like this in either of their quarters on the helipad. 

Call him naive, but he likes having a few moments of his life not recorded, time stamped, and carefully filed away in secret databases. 

“What are you thinking, Agent?” Nick asks, raising his brow. He rubs his knuckles over Phil’s shoulder and cocks his head. 

“How long until the food gets here, Boss,” Phil says with a shrug and Nick snorts out a laugh. 

“You’re a damn liar,” he says easily. 

They both are, in their own ways. What was it Tony said? Nick isn’t a spy, he’s _the_ spy, which is more than fair. Phil has no illusions that he knows everything there is to know about Nick, no more than Nick knows everything there is to know about him. But after fifteen years, there’s more depth between them than Phil has with anyone else. That has to count for something. 

“Good thing you love me,” Phil says. 

Nick laughs. “Yeah, good thing I do.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Come On Up To The House by sinuous_curve](https://archiveofourown.org/works/706336) by [sk_lee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sk_lee/pseuds/sk_lee)




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